'agenda'driven stay-at-home researchers'. Who might these be?

Hi Steve, and a Happy New Year to you too.    I should probably have been clearer: I was referring particularly to Dave Harker and various other self-styled researchers I've come across in the course of my work on Cecil Sharp. It's very easy to sit in front of a word processor and find grounds to criticize field workers without whose contributions we would have nothing at all to go on. Obviously I'm aware that field work is not the only way to research folk song, not least because of the availability of online resources of the kind I've used a lot in my own work.

Regarding interview techniques, I have little to no confidence that formal training would actually have achieved better results in the case of Walter Pardon, or indeed MacColl / Larner and other such interactions. I'd be interested to know what questions critics of these interviews would prefer to have been put to the singers concerned.